Obama in Cuba: why and what to expect

President Obama's visit to Cuba between 20-22 March, the first in almost 90 years, will probably bring a lot of hopes and possible deals for US companies, but will not change too much the massive human rights violations on the island. After decades of economic and political isolation, Cuba is progressivelly opening to businesses, but the high number of arrests among dissidents in the last weeks - around 2,555 in the first months of the year according to local and international human rights NGOs - shows that there is a very long way till the country will achieve democratic standards, if ever.

Obama is accompanied by a massive delegation of business people, among which representatives of AT&T, Xerox, Marriott and Starwood hotel chains, as well as bi-partisan senators. In the next months it is expected that US airlines will start commercial flights to Cuba. A full lifting of the embargo is not possible too soon, given the strong opposition of the Republican-dominated Congress, many of them strongly opposing this visit. Over the years, the Congress created exceptions to embargo, allowing, among others, US companies to sell construction materials, or agricultural and telecommunications equipment. White Houe is considering revising various regulations to allow American dollars to be used in transactions with Cuba and give green light to Americans to travel individually in Cuba. As for now, after decades long when visiting the Caribbean island was definitely forbidden, American can visit only part of groups. 

Compared with Nixon's visit to China - except that Obama does not have a smart help as Kissinger - the coming agenda includes meeting with Raul Castro, the brother of the Fidel who used to throw diatribes against the US, a possible attendance of a US-Cuba baseball game - Major League Baseball is part of the delegation too looking for deals for getting easily Cuban players -, a public speech at the University of Havana and a meeting with dissidents, most probably carefully chosen by the authorities. What will be avoided at any price will be a photo opp with Fidel, but do not forget that Raul was comrade in arms with his brother and part of the same system. 

US consulting companies warn that given the difficult legal and economic environment in Cuba, it will be quite complicated for American firms to operate in the communist country, but probably there was little choice left to the US given the high interest of countries like France, Japan and Russia to start serious businesses with Havana government. If we think about the good Cold War relations between Havana and Moscow, it is hard to believe that Russians ever left, with many elites well trained in the Soviet institutions.

The official publication Granma, who over the years made a hobby from publishing many pages anti-American propaganda announced in one of its last issues that Cuba will not cede 'one inch' in its 'unconditional commitment to its revolutionary and anti-imperialist principles'. On the other side, Obama also announced in December, during a Yahoo interview, that he will not visit the island if the human rights conditions will not improve. It is hard to say now who won, but democracy and human rights did not for now it seems. 

The warming up of the relations started in September 2014, when Castro and Obama met during the UN General Assembly. According to the diplomatic practices, an official visit of Raul Castro to Washington may follow, but it is hard to say if it will happen during the mandate of the current president. 

To be continued...

Daily Media Digest

Middle East

Al Jazeera: Death toll in Libya - 200 persons, at least
Yemen: Separatist leader arrested and Students continue the protests against the president
Bahrain under fire. US top-diplomat call for reforms "now"
Newsweek, on Egypt: The Facebook freedom fighters and The tragedy of Hosni Mubarak
Iran: Rafsanjani's daughter arrested
US vote and the UN Resolution on Settlements. The reactions from the Arab world: Arab League, Palestinian protests, Jordan regrets

Europe


EU bets on Ireland's recovery
Bilbao: Support for the Basque party
Romania, Bulgaria and Schengen


Latin America


Dissident freed in Cuba
Calls for boosting ties with the Middle East
Waiting for Obama
Political movies at Berlinale


Asia


Chinese security officials respond to call for protests
Japan to dig site linked to WWII human experiment


Africa


Protests in Morocco, asking the limitations of King's powers
EU's answer to the protests in North Africa
Uganda: Controversial vote

Global trends

G-20 meeting is over

The power of Internet

vs. the power of Castro(s)?

Pros and cons for Obama's prize

Congratulations from Cuba and Russia, harsh critics from the Republicans.

Cuba: Do Not Disturb

Raul Castro promised last Saturday to do not "restore capitalism". With the exception in the interest of his own family, already capitalist, in fact considering the whole Cuba as its own hacienda.

Blogging all over the world

- the dangers, opportunities and the networks.

Cuba: Friends in High Places

Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

Stratfor.com
June 10

On June 4, 2009, Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, were arrested by the FBI and charged with spying for the government of Cuba. According to court documents filed in the case, the Myers allegedly were recruited by the Cuban intelligence service in 1979 and worked for them as agents until 2007. On June 10, 2009, a U.S. Magistrate Judge ruled that the couple posed a flight risk and ordered them held without bond.
The criminal complaint filed by the FBI in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on June 4 and the grand jury indictment returned in the case have been released to the public, and these two documents provide a fascinating and detailed historical account of the activities of Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers. Perhaps more importantly, however, these documents provide an excellent opportunity to understand how the Cuban intelligence service works and serve as a primer on Cuba’s espionage efforts inside the United States.

Case Details

According to the criminal complaint filed by the FBI, Kendall Myers served from 1959 to 1962 in the U.S. Army Security Agency (ASA), which was the Army’s signal intelligence branch at that time. Myers reportedly worked for the ASA as a linguist who was assigned to work translating intercepted messages from Eastern Bloc countries in Europe.
In 1972, Myers earned a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), in Washington, D.C. Myers then worked as an assistant professor of European Studies at SAIS and became a part-time contract instructor in August 1977 at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) teaching European studies.
While employed as a contractor at the FSI, Myers attended a lecture at the FSI on Cuba that was presented by a Cuban intelligence officer assigned to the Cuban permanent mission to the United Nations. The intelligence officer (identified in the complaint only as co-conspirator “A”) then reportedly invited Myers and two of his colleagues to travel to Cuba on an academic visit. According to the FBI, Myers traveled to Cuba for a two-week trip in December 1978. The complaint contained several entries from a journal that Myers allegedly kept during the trip, and was obtained during a search of Myers’ residence. In the journal entries, Myers fawned over the Cuban revolution and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom Myers said was “certainly one of the great political leaders of our time.”
According the complaint, approximately six months after Myers returned from his trip to Cuba, he and Gwendolyn were visited at their home in South Dakota by “A” who, according to the FBI, pitched and recruited the Myers to work for the Cuban intelligence service. While they were recruited in 1979, the couple stated that they did not begin actively working for the Cuban intelligence service until 1981. This timeline seems to match Myers’ job search efforts.
After being recruited, Kendall Myers was allegedly instructed by his handler to move back to Washington and seek government employment in order to gain access to information deemed valuable to the Cubans. In 1981, he applied for a job at the Central Intelligence Agency and in 1982, he returned to working as a part-time contract instructor at the FSI, and became the chairman for Western European studies. In 1985, he applied for a full-time job at the FSI teaching Western European studies, and in 1999, Myers took a position at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), as the senior European analyst. Myers stayed in that position until his retirement in 2007. After his retirement from the State Department in 2007, Myers returned to SAIS and worked there until his arrest.
On the afternoon of April 15, 2009, Myers was approached by an FBI undercover source while leaving SAIS. The undercover source told Myers that he had been sent to contact Myers by a Cuban intelligence officer (identified in the complaint as co-conspirator “D”). The undercover source told Myers that the reason for the contact was because of the changes taking place in Cuba and the new U.S. administration. The source also wished Myers a happy birthday and gave him a Cuban cigar. Myers, convinced the undercover source was authentic, agreed to bring his wife to a meeting with the source at a Washington hotel later that evening.

Spilling the Beans

According to the complaint, the FBI undercover source met with the Myers on three occasions, April 15, April 16 and April 30, at different Washington-area hotels. During these meetings, they divulged a great deal of information pertaining to their work as Cuban agents. They provided information regarding what they passed to the Cuban government, how Kendall obtained the information and how they passed the information to their handlers. They also detailed their meetings with handlers and the methods they used to communicate with them.
According to the complaint, Kendall Myers proudly told the source that he provided information at the Secret and Top Secret levels to the Cubans. When asked by the source if he had furnished information from the CIA, Kendall Myers responded “all the time.” He said that he preferred to take notes on classified documents rather than smuggle them out directly, but at times, he smuggled classified material out of the State Department in his briefcase, only to return the documents the next day after he had duplicated them. This information was then passed to handlers during meetings or by brush passes. Many of the meetings took place in New York, and the Myers felt those meetings were very dangerous. Gwendolyn admitted to having passed documents by exchanging shopping carts in a grocery store. The Myers also told the source about a shortwave radio set that they used to receive coded messages from their handler.
After the September 2001 arrest of Ana Montes, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) senior Cuba analyst (who admitted to spying for Cuba for ideological motives), the Myers became much more careful about contacts with their handler, and most face-to-face contact after that time was accomplished outside of the United States. They told the source that between January 2002 and December 2005, they traveled to Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico in order to meet with Cuban handlers. The FBI was able to verify all these trips through official records.
After a confrontation with a supervisor at INR after returning from a 2006 trip to China, the Myers became very concerned that they had been identified and placed on a watch list by the INR supervisor. At that time, they told the source, they destroyed all their clandestine communications equipment, except for their shortwave radio and their false travel documents. They refused to travel to Mexico after this point because they believed it was too dangerous.
The Myers continued to receive periodic messages from their handler, who had begun to communicate via e-mail, following the Montes case. They also passed encrypted messages to their handler via e-mail. Gwendolyn noted that they would never use their own computer for such communication but used computers at Internet cafes instead.
The complaint provided the details of two e-mail messages the Myers received in December 2008 and March 2009 from a Cuban intelligence officer in Mexico, who asked for a meeting with them in Mexico. The intelligence officer was operating under the guise of an art dealer named Peter Herrera. The e-mails asked the Myers to come and see what he had for them. They responded to the e-mails saying they were delighted to hear from Peter and to learn that his art gallery was still open to them, but that they had not yet made travel plans for the coming year. The Myers told the source that they thought traveling to Mexico for a meeting with Peter was too risky. They also confirmed that Peter was a pseudonym used by a Cuban intelligence officer.
When the source asked the Myers during the third meeting if their trip to Mexico in 2005 had been “the end” (meaning the end of their work for the Cuban intelligence service), Kendall Myers replied that their work would continue, but that he wanted to work in more of a reserve status, where he would talk to contacts, rather than resume work as a full-time U.S. government employee. When the source told the Myers he was going to send a report to Cuba with information pertaining to them, Gwendolyn reportedly said, “be sure and tell them we love them.”
They arranged to meet with the source on June 4, at yet another Washington-area hotel, and were arrested by the FBI when they appeared for that meeting. If the recordings of the three meetings have been accurately represented in the complaint, they are going to be very damaging to the Myers. Additionally, several of the physical items recovered during a search conducted on the Myers residence will also be strong evidence, such as the shortwave radio set and a travel guide printed in Cuba in the mid- to late-1990s, which would seem to substantiate their illicit 1995 visit.

‘I’ — The Cuban Staple

When discussing espionage cases, we often refer to an old Cold War acronym — MICE — to explain the motivations of spies. MICE stands for money, ideology, compromise and ego. Traditionally, money has proved to be the No. 1 motivation, but as seen in Kendall Myers’ journal entries and in the meetings with the source, the Myers were motivated solely by ideology and not by money. In fact, the complaint provides no indication that the Myers had ever sought or accepted money from the Cuban intelligence service for their espionage activities.
According to the complaint, the Myers were scathing in their criticism of the United States during their meetings with the source. In addition to their criticism of U.S. government policy, they were also very critical of American people, whom they referred to as “North Americans.” Myers said the problem with the United States is that it is full of too many North Americans.
The Myers also expressed their love for Cuba and for the ideals of the Cuban revolution. In the first meeting with the source, Kendall asked the source, “How is everybody at home?” referring to Cuba. Gwendolyn expressed her desire to use the couple’s boat to “sail home,” meaning travel to Cuba.
The couple also provided the source with details of a January 1995 trip they took to Cuba. According to the Myers, in addition to receiving “lots of medals” from the Cuban government (something commonly awarded to ideological spies by the Soviet KGB), the best thing they received was the opportunity to meet Fidel Castro. The couple stated they had the opportunity to spend about four hours one evening with the Cuban leader. According to the FBI complaint, Kendall told the source that Castro was “wonderful, just wonderful” and Gwendolyn added, “He’s the most incredible statesman for a hundred years for goodness sake.”
During the third meeting, the couple also allegedly talked to the source about Ana Montes. Kendall told the source that Montes is a “hero … but she took too many chances … in my opinion … she wasn’t paranoid enough.” Gwendolyn added “but she loved it, she did what she loved to do.” Kendall added, “We have a great admiration for Ana Montes.” Gwendolyn also noted that, “I envy her being able to love what she was doing and say what she was doing and why she was doing it ‘cause I can’t do that.” This is significant because during her trial, Montes was unrepentant and railed against the United States when she read a statement during her sentencing hearing. Gwendolyn appeared to be responding to Montes’ public statement.
In view of the Myers’ case, the Montes case and other cases, like that involving Carlos and Elsa Alvarez, the Cubans clearly prefer to use agents who are ideologically motivated.

Lessons

In addition to the Cuban preference for ideologically motivated agents, perhaps one of the greatest lessons that can be taken from the Myers’ case is simply a reminder that espionage did not end with the conclusion of the Cold War. According to the FBI complaint, a Cuban intelligence officer attempted to contact the Myers as recently as March 2009.
This case also shows that the Cuban intelligence service is very patient and is willing to wait for the agents it recruits to move into sensitive positions within the U.S. government. It took several years for Myers to get situated in a job with access to highly classified information. The Myers investigation also shows that the Cuban agents are not always obviously people working on Cuban issues — Myers was a European affairs specialist. There is also a possibility that the Cubans sold or traded intelligence they gained from Myers pertaining to Europe to their Soviet (and later Russian) friends.
While at INR, it is significant that Myers not only had access to information collected by State Department employees in the field, but also was privy to all-source intelligence reporting from the rest of the intelligence community (CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, etc.) According to the complaint, an analysis of Myers’ work computer revealed that from August 2006 to October 2007, Myers looked at more than 200 intelligence reports pertaining to Cuba; 75 of those reports made no mention of countries within Myers’ area of interest (Europe), and most of the documents were classified either Secret or Top Secret.
The government will have to conduct a damage assessment that will attempt to trace everything Myers had access to during his entire career, which will no doubt encompass thousands of documents. As the State Department’s representative to the intelligence community, INR is also involved in crafting policy papers and national intelligence estimates. Myers began working at the State Department before there was electronic access to records, so it will be very difficult to identify every document he had access to. But in addition to the actual documents he viewed, Myers also had the opportunity to chat with many colleagues about what they were working on and to ask their opinions of policies and events, so the damage goes much further than just documents, which complicates the damage assessment. He was also in charge of training new INR analysts, which could have allowed him an opportunity to assess which analysts were the best possible targets for Cuban recruitment efforts.
The information Myers could have provided while at the FSI is more subtle, but no less valuable from an intelligence operational perspective. Myers could have acted as a spotter, letting his handlers know which officers were moving through the institute, where they were going to be assigned, and perhaps even indicating which ones he thought were the best candidates for recruitment based on observed vulnerabilities. He could have served a similar function while at SAIS, pointing out promising students for the Cubans to focus on — especially students who agreed with his view of American policy, and who might be targeted for recruitment using an ideological approach. While Montes did graduate with a master’s degree from SAIS in 1988, she was already working at the DIA (and for the Cubans) by the time she began her graduate work there, so it is unlikely that Myers was involved in her recruitment. In the end, it will likely take months, if not years, for the government to do a full damage assessment on this case.
One of the other interesting factors regarding this case is that in spite of Myers’ strong anti-American political beliefs — which were reportedly expressed in his classes — none of the background investigations conducted on him by the State Department provided any indication of concern. Furthermore, he was cleared for access to Top Secret material in 1985 and Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (SCI) in 1999 — 20 years after he was recruited by the Cubans. Apparently the agents and investigators who conducted his background investigations did not dig deeply enough uncover the warning signs of his radical beliefs, or the people they interviewed knowingly withheld such information.
With Montes arrested at DIA, and now Myers from INR, it certainly makes one wonder where the next ideologically driven Cuban agent will be found inside the U.S. intelligence community

Cuba 'less sure' after Obama overture: WHouse

AFP
April 24

Cuban leaders seem "a little less sure of themselves" after US President Barack Obama's lifted travel and money transfer restrictions on Cuban-Americans, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday.

Gibbs was asked by reporters about Obama's reaction to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro's remark in Cuban newspapers Wednesday that Obama had "misinterpreted" his brother Cuban President Raul Castro's words on possible changes for political prisoners and human rights in Cuba.

"It's a bit amusing that in order to keep what they have, the leadership in Cuba seems a little less sure of themselves based on some of the actions that the president took," Gibbs said.

"I don't see what that leadership has to fear with the travel of people -- of Cuban Americans back to Cuba or the sending of money or the transmission of words and signals over our airwaves," he added.

"And I think if the Cuban government is serious about reform, then they know the actions and the steps they should take," Gibbs said.

Obama said Raul Castro's talk offer was "a very welcome overture," but Fidel ruled out any prisoner release in Cuba and said Obama showed arrogance in dismissing his offer to exchange some political prisoners for five jailed Cuban spies.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said Fidel Castro's comments denoted some difference of opinion between the Castro brothers, showing that the communist regime was coming to an end.

"You can see there is beginning to be a debate, I mean this is a regime that is ending. It will end at some point," Clinton told lawmakers at a hearing in Washington.

Cuban blogger talks about citizen journalism project and 'blogostroika'

Los Angeles Times

Yoanie Sanchez, Cuba's star blogger, has elaborated a little more about the citizen journalism project she launched on the island in January in an attempt to challenge media censorship there.

Sanchez, who is the author of the blog Generación Y, started the Voces Cubanas (Cuban Voices) blogging platform to gather citizen journalists from across the island, according to the Knight Center for Journalism's Journalism in the Americas blog.

Global Voices' Claudia Cadelo interviews Sánchez about the project, which she says is different from Generación Y and the existing Desde Cuba.

She says in the interview: "It is a website where all those who want to express ideas, put their projects online, can do so. It is born and inspired by the experience that we gained through the administration of other sites, but there is not an editorial policy that guides it, rather each blogger is his or her own director, editor and even censor."

Sanchez also talks about the concept of "blogostróika," the name used by many for the blogging movement in Cuba.

The idea of calling this new phenomenon with the label of blogostróika came from Cubans writing their blogs from exile. [It is what] they called this new wave of personal and collective sites with Cuban themes that have appeared in the past five years. The use of this term is a clear allusion to the process that came about when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, especially during the information transparency process called glasnost. Even though the term sounds nice, I have to make a small comment that perestroika was pushed from a position of power, while the alternative Cuban blogosphere did not ask permission from anyone to exist.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Beneath the U.S. Obsession With Cuba

George Friedman
Stratfor
April 13

The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), a group vehemently opposed to the Cuban government, came out in favor of easing the U.S. isolation of Cuba last week. The move opens the possibility that the United States might shift its policies toward Cuba. Florida is a key state for anyone who wants to become president of the United States, and the Cuban community in Florida is substantial. Though the Soviet threat expired long ago, easing the embargo on Cuba has always held limited value to American politicians with ambitions. For them, Florida is more important than Cuba. Therefore, this historic shift alters the U.S. domestic political landscape.

In many ways, the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba has been more important to the Cubans than to the United States, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Cuban economy is in abysmal shape. But the U.S. embargo has been completely ineffective on the stated goal of destabilizing the Cuban government, which has used the embargo as justification for economic hardship. Although the embargo isolates Cuba from its natural market, the United States, the embargo is not honored by Canada, Mexico, Europe, China or anyone else beyond the United States. That means Cuban goods can be sold on the world market, Cuba can import anything it can pay for, and Cuba can get investment of any size from any country wishing to invest on the island. Because it has almost complete access to the global market, Cuba’s economic problem is not the U.S. embargo. But the embargo does create a political defense for Cuban dysfunction.

It is easy to dismiss the embargo issue as primarily a matter of domestic politics for both nations. It is also possible to argue that, though Cuba was once significant to the United States, that significance has declined since the end of the Cold War. Both assertions are valid, but neither is sufficient. Beyond the apparently disproportionate U.S. obsession with Cuba, and beyond a Cuban government whose ideology pivots around anti-Americanism, there are deeper and more significant geopolitical factors to consider.

Cuba occupies an extraordinarily important geographic position for the United States. It sits astride the access points from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean, and therefore is in a position to impact the export of U.S. agricultural products via the Mississippi River complex and New Orleans (not to mention the modern-day energy industrial centers along the Gulf Coast). If New Orleans is the key to the American Midwest’s access to the world, Cuba is the key to New Orleans.

(click image to enlarge)

Access to the Atlantic from the Gulf runs on a line from Key West to the Yucatan Peninsula, a distance of about 380 miles. Running perpendicular through the middle of this line is Cuba. The Straits of Florida, the northern maritime passage from the Gulf to the Atlantic, is about 90 miles wide from Havana to Key West. The Yucatan Channel, the southern maritime passage, is about 120 miles wide. Cuba itself is about 600 miles long. On the northern route, the Bahamas run parallel to Cuba for about half that distance, forcing ships to the south, toward Cuba. On the southern route, after the Yucatan gantlet, the passage out of the Caribbean is made long and complicated by the West Indies. A substantial, hostile naval force or air power based in Cuba could blockade the Gulf of Mexico — and hence the American heartland.

Throughout the 19th century, Cuba was of concern to the United States for this reason. The moribund Spanish Empire controlled Cuba through most of the century, something the United States could live with. The real American fear was that the British — who had already tried for New Orleans itself in the War of 1812 — would expel the Spanish from Cuba and take advantage of the island’s location to strangle the United States. Lacking the power to do anything about Spain itself, the United States was content to rely on Madrid to protect Spanish interests and those of the United States.

Cuba remained a Spanish colony long after other Spanish colonies gained independence. The Cubans were intensely afraid of both the United States and Britain, and saw a relationship with Spain — however unpleasant — as more secure than risking English or American domination. The Cubans had mixed feelings about the prospect of formal independence from Spain followed by unofficial foreign domination.

But in 1895, the Cubans rose up against Spain (not for the first time) in what turned into the struggle that would culminate in the island’s independence from the country. With a keen interest in Cuba, Washington declared war on Spain in 1898 and invaded Cuba. The Spanish were quickly defeated in the Spanish-American War and soon withdrew from the island. For the United States, the main goal was less about gaining control of Cuba itself (though that was the net result) than about denying Cuba to other world powers.

The United States solved its Cuban problem by establishing a naval base at Guantanamo Bay on the island. Between this base and U.S. naval bases in the Gulf and on the East Coast, British naval forces in the Bahamas were placed in a vise. By establishing Guantanamo Bay on the southern coast of Cuba, near the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, the United States controlled the southern route to the Atlantic through the Yucatan Channel.

For the United States, any power that threatened to establish a naval presence in Cuba represented a direct threat to U.S. national security. When there were fears during World War I that the Germans might seek to establish U-boat bases in Cuba — an unrealistic concern — the United States interfered in Cuban politics to preclude that possibility. But it was the Soviet Union’s presence in Cuba during the Cold War that really terrified the Americans.

From the Soviet point of view, Cuba served a purpose no other island in the region could serve. Missiles could be based in many places in the region, but only Cuba could bottle up the Gulf of Mexico. Any Soviet planner looking at a map would immediately identify Cuba as a key asset; any American planner looking at the same map would identify Cuba in Soviet hands as a key threat. For the Soviets, establishing a pro-Soviet regime in Cuba represented a geopolitical masterstroke. For the United States, it represented a geopolitical nightmare that had to be reversed.

Just as U.S. medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Turkey put the Soviet heartland in the crosshairs during the Cold War, Soviet missiles deployed operationally in Cuba put the entire U.S. Eastern Seaboard at risk. Mere minutes would have been available for detection and recognition of an attack before impact. In addition, the missiles’ very presence would serve as a significant deterrent to conventional attack on the island — which is why it was so important for the United States not to allow an established missile presence in Cuba.

The final outcome of the U.S.-Soviet standoff pivoted on the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which ended in an American blockade of Cuba, not a Soviet blockade of the Gulf. It was about missiles, not about maritime access. But the deal that ended the crisis solved the problem for the United States. In return for a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba, the Soviets promised not to place nuclear missiles on the island. If the Soviets didn’t have missiles there, the United States could neutralize any naval presence in Cuba — and therefore any threat to American trade routes. Fidel Castro could be allowed to survive, but in a position of strategic vulnerability. One part of Washington’s strategy was military, and the other part was economic — namely, the embargo.

Throughout Cuba’s history as an independent nation, the Cubans simultaneously have viewed the United States as an economic driver of the Cuban economy, and as a threat to Cuban political autonomy. The Americans have looked at Cuba as a potential strategic threat. This imbalance made U.S. domination of Cuba inevitable. Cuban leaders in the first half of the 20th century accepted domination in return for prosperity. But there were those who argued that the island’s prosperity was unequally distributed, and the loss of autonomy too damaging to accept. Castro led the latter group to success in the 1959 revolution against U.S.-supported Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. The anti-Castro emigres who fled to the United States and established an influential community of anti-Castro sentiment had been part of the elite who prospered from Cuba’s high level of dependence on the United States.

Cuban history has been characterized by an oscillation of views about the United States, with Cubans both wanting what it had to offer and seeking foreign powers — the Spanish, the British the Soviets — to counterbalance the Americans. But the counterbalance either never materialized (in the case of the British) or, when it did, it was as suffocating as the Americans (in the case of the Soviets). In the end, Cuba probably would have preferred to be located somewhere not of strategic interest to the United States.

The U.S. obsession with Cuba does not manifest itself continuously; it appears only when a potentially hostile major power allies itself with Cuba and bases itself there. Cuba by itself can never pose a threat to the United States. Absent a foreign power, the United States is never indifferent to Cuba, but is much less sensitive. Therefore, after the end of the Cold War and the Soviet collapse, Cuba became a minor issue for the United States — and political considerations took precedence over geopolitical issues. Florida’s electoral votes were more important than Cuba, and the status quo was left untouched.

Cuba has become a bit more important to the United States in the wake of the August 2008 Russo-Georgian war. In response to that conflict, the Americans sent warships into the Black Sea. The Russians responded by sending warships and strategic bombers into the Caribbean. High-profile Russian delegations have held talks with Cuba since then, increasing tensions. But these tensions are a tiny fraction of what they once were. Russia is in no way a strategic threat to American shipping in the Gulf of Mexico, nor is it going to be any time soon, due to Russia’s limited ability to wield substantive power in such a distant theater.

But Cuba is always an underlying concern to the United States. This concern can subside, but it cannot go away. Thus, from the American point of view, Russian probes are a reminder that Cuba remains a potential threat. Advocates of easing the embargo say it will help liberalize Cuba, just as trade relations liberalized Russia. The Cuban leadership shares this view and will therefore be very careful about how any liberalization is worked out. The Cubans must be thoroughly convinced of the benefits of increased engagement with the United States in order for Havana to sacrifice its ability to blame Washington for all of its economic problems. If Cuba opens too much to the United States, the Cuban regime might fall. In the end, it might be the Cubans who shy away from an end to the embargo. The Americans have little to lose either way.

But that is all politics. The important thing to understand about Cuba is the historic U.S. obsession with the island, and why the Cubans have never been able to find their balance with the United States. The answer lies in geopolitics. The politics in play now are simply the bubble on the surface of much deeper forces.

Obama eases travel, money transfers for Cuban-Americans

David Jackson
USA TODAY
April 13

President Obama altered the nation's Cuba policy on Monday, lifting restrictions on Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives on the island and send them financial assistance.

"There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban-Americans," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

The announcement fulfills an Obama campaign promise, and comes less than a week before he attends a summit with Latin American leaders; many of those leaders have urged the U.S. to moderate its stance towards the communist government of Cuba.

The adminstration is also allowing telecommunications companies to seek cellphone and television services linking Cuba and the United States, according to Obama's order.

SUMMIT PREVIEW: Obama may face pressure over ties with Cuba

Obama did not end the economic embargo against Cuba that has been in effect since 1962, a year after the U.S. cut off diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's communist regime. Ending the embargo requires approval by Congress.

Cuba is a challenging political issue for any president, thanks largely to the active Cuban-American community in South Florida.

"He's got to deal with the Cubans in Miami and the Cubans in Havana," said Peter Hakim, director of the Inter-American Dialogue, a bi-partisan policy center in Washington, D.C. "This is really a very charged political issue."

U.S. Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart — Cuban-American brothers — denounced Obama's "unilateral concessions." The House Republicans said easing travel and money restrictions will provide "the dictatorship with critical financial support."

The government — now run by Fidel's brother Raul Castro — will be emboldened to "further isolate, imprison, and brutalize pro-democracy activists," the Diaz-Balart brothers said in a statement.

But another Republican conservative — Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona — praised Obama's action. "One would expect the Cuban government to tell its citizens where they can and can't travel, but for our government to impose similar restrictions has never made sense," Flake said.

Flake called on Congress to lift travel restrictions to Cuba for all Americans.

Dan Restrepo, an Obama adviser on Latin American issues, called the moves "a reaching out to the Cuban people."

"It's very important to help open up space so the Cuban people can work on the, kind of, grassroots democracy that is necessary to move Cuba to a better future," said Restrepo, a special assistant to the president and a senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council.

Frank Calzon, executive director of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba, was not surprised by the announcement since Obama had promised to remove the restrictions on the campaign trail nearly a year ago. But Calzon hopes it's as far as Obama goes.

"We believe he'll be true to his other promise during the campaign that he will keep the embargo in place until political prisoners are released and political and economic reforms take place," Calzon said. "That's what the president has said and we believe that he will be true to his word."

President Kennedy enacted a travel ban to Cuba in 1963, a policy that has loosened and tighetened over the years.

Obama's announcememt lifted travel and remittance restrictions put in place by President George W. Bush. His policy limited travel to Cuba to two weeks every three years, and restricted that travel to only immediate family members.

The new rules also expand the items that can be sent to Cuba, such as clothing, personal hygiene and fishing equipment. It still prohibits sending items to senior government officials and Communist Party members.

Three members of Congress recently traveled to Cuba and met with both Fidel and Raul Castro, who began running the government after his brother fell ill in 2006. The delegation consisted of members of the Congressional Black Caucus: Rep. Barbara Lee of California, Laura Richardson of California, and Bobby Rush of Illinois, all Democrats.

Cuba figures to be a major topic at this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of the United States, has tried to use the Cuban issue to separate the United States and Latin America. Chavez has protested the fact that Cuba has not been invited to the Summit of the Americas.

Even Latin allies such as Brazil have argued that the U.S. anti-communist policty is isolating the United States in Latin American, said analyst Julia Sweig, and these "tentative" steps are unlikely to impress members of the Summit of the Americas.

"It's going to be seen as a very limited step," said Sweig, director of Latin Studies with the Council on Foreign Relations.

Hakim pointed out that "every Latin America national has normal political and economic relations with Cuba."

Any attempts to expand cellphone, computer, or broadcast communications between Cuba and the United States faces a major challenge from the Cuban government.

"You will still have the problem of jamming," said Johanna Mendelson Forman, a Cuba specalist with the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has opposed the Cuban embargo, released a statement of approval at the president's action.

"We are very encouraged by the initial steps taken by the administration to make it easier for family members to travel to Cuba and to send more types of humanitarian aid to the island," said Myron Brilliant, the chamber's senior vice president for international affairs.

"The last 50 years of our embargo against Cuba have proven that unilateral sanctions do not work. Rather than encouraging Cuba to democratize, the embargo actually helped prop up a Communist regime," Brilliant said.

Contributing: Alan Gomez in McLean, Va.

See also:

The NY Times - White House Fact Sheet on Cuba

Soft sovereignty as Cuban state policy

I have no idea neither Fidel Castro (82) is using the e-mailor nor his younger brother Raul (78). But by their grateful contribution the Cuban people - deprived by basic food, normal salaries, decent life conditions - are enjoying their own, 100% Cuban, Linux version. The Cuban Revolution is alive and watching...

Fidel Castro demands Obama return Guantanamo base

Marc Frank
January 29
Reuters

HAVANA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro demanded on Thursday that President Barak Obama return the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo to Cuba without conditions, and he accused the new U.S. leader of supporting "Israeli genocide" against Palestinians.

Castro, who had recently praised Obama as "honest" and "noble", lashed out at his administration for stating that Washington will not return Guantanamo if it has any military use for the United States and without concessions in return.

"Maintaining a military base in Cuba against the will of the people violates the most elemental principles of international law," Castro wrote in a column posted on the government-run website www.cubadebate.cu.

"Not respecting Cuba's will is an arrogant act and an abuse of immense power against a little country," Castro said, resorting to a charge he has leveled against the 10 previous U.S. presidents since he came to power in a 1959 revolution.

Cuba indefinitely leased Guantanamo to the United States in 1903 after the United States occupied the country during the 1998 Spanish-American War. Castro charges that the base at the south-eastern tip of Cuba was taken over illegally.

Earlier on Thursday, Washington's loudest critic in Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, also urged Obama to return the Guantanamo base, after applauding his decision to close the prison camp for terrorism suspects there.

"Now he should return Guantanamo and Guantanamo Bay to the Cubans because that is Cuban territory," Chavez, Cuba's closest ally, said in a speech in Brazil.

Fidel Castro has been seen only in a few videos and photos since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006 from which he never fully recovered.

But he has maintained a public profile through his writings and meetings with visiting foreign leaders, and he is believed to retain an important political role behind the scenes.

His brother Raul Castro provisionally took power after the surgery, then officially became president in February.

Obama has said he wants to move toward normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations but would not eliminate the 46-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the communist-led island without political reforms.

Until Thursday's column, the Castro brothers had praised Obama and held back direct criticism of his administration.

Fidel Castro on Thursday also attacked Obama for supporting Israel's invasion of Gaza.

"It is the way our friend Obama has fallen into sharing Israel's genocide against Palestinians," Castro wrote in his called "Deciphering the thought of the new U.S. president."



An unexpected consequence of the huge, sometimes aggressive discussion ,about Guantanamo? "Let justice prevails", isn't it?...

Cuban revolution turns 50

The last 50 years of the official Cuba, in Reuters' pictures - http://uk.reuters.com/news/pictures/rpSlideshows?articleId=UKRTR22ZAN#a=1. On the occasion of the anniversary, they were held various events - lower profile than usual -, as ordinary Cubans continue to struggle daily through hard times brought on by a sputtering state-run economy and a decades-long trade and travel embargo by the United States. It is not clear how the new Obama administration will position regarding Cuba, but before a clear statement, a group of human rights supporter asked the lifting of the embargo.

News from the other world

They are still many places in the world where isolation and ignorance, fear and violence are the basic ingredients of the daily life. We are aware of their existence randomly, as the access of the foreign media is strictly prohibited, and the information is exclusively released by censorship and biased channels. Took for example North Korea, four weeks ago took off of a terrorist list by US. The Pyongyang authorities released these days exclusive coverage of the last activities of Kim Jong-il – who, among other things, “attended a concert where a state choir and opera groups performs numbers like “’Please Receive Our Salute’!” – being “healthy and in control”. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/asia/07kim.html?_r=1&ref=asia&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin )
In Cuba, Brazilian president Lula de Silva met Fidel Castro, who, we are assured is “very lucid and active”. (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jtG6AJe5yEBOoAlpU6xrKYt3Vlhw)
Lybian leader Moammar Ghaddafi met in Belarus his counterpart Aleksandr Lukashenko (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/11/02/europe/EU-Belarus-Libya.php). Mid-October, EU ministers decided to lift, for six months only, the travel ban imposed to Lukashenko and another 41 associates, following 2006 presidential elections, judged not in compliance with the international norms. Their assets are still frozen.(http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h8u0ElWuKMSPSp-iPF6o9YfURNqg)